D L Thomas

TAILs D L Thomas

Four year old Chloe Salazar ingests a compound her father, Greg Salazar, a geneticist, has developed as an employee of the Animal Behavioral Laboratories. The compound's purpose is to discover if the traits of animals can be changed to make them more trainable. The compound Chloe took was from the genes of a cat. In a matter of weeks, Chloe starts developing a tail. The media discovers the story of "the little girl with a tail" and she becomes an overnight sensation. Having a tail becomes the current fad. There's a knock on the door of Greg's residence by Ms. Alma Gilroy of the Children's Services Department. She is accompanied by two cops who arrest Greg for Child Endangering. They take him to jail to await trial. Capitalizing on all the media attention to "the girl with a tail", Chloe's mother, Dana Salazar, takes Chloe to appear on the Barry Brown Show. He is a very popular talk show host. Dana has an ongoing affair with Barry Brown while displaying Chloe on a nationwide tour of numerous TV shows. Dana revels in the attention she receives as Chloe's mother although, she had initially called Chloe a freak. Having a tail soon becomes a fad for youth of the world. The Animal Behavioral Laboratory, Greg's employer where he had extracted the compound, recognizes an opportunity to make immense profits from selling the compound for much more than the small price it cost to manufacture it. They have an advertising campaign and start selling the compound through a six month prescription. They are soon overwhelmed with sales. Profits are rolling in but then, Chloe starts developing other attributes of a cat, fur, whiskers, claws, etc. Soon, the young people who had bought and taken the compound also start developing those things, things they hadn't expected and don't want. Meanwhile, Greg sits in jail, unable to work on a reversal agent, unable to help Chloe, unable to have any contact with Chloe because of the Judge's order.